Hot Wind And Hot Heads [Fuuen, Nao]

He moved and dodged, Nao's body twisting in the air to aim her polearm downwards and dig it into the ground. If she was trying to lock him down good and proper then she'd have tried to intercept his horizontal blade with the shaft and spin around the spear like a damn monkey to kick him in the head!

At the moment though she was just getting warmed up and so she jumped vaulted away and landed a few metres off to the distance. The little Sawachika didn't give him much time to linger there though, her spear being pulled out and making a wide arc towards him to expel a force of concentrated reiatsu infused with her touki - crush his mind, spirit and body!

Sanzan Koken - Kosou. The sweeping arc of pressure tore at the air between them to blow him away and destroy whatever puny stance he wanted to use against her. Everything would break against her claws!

The arc of pressure cutting toward Fuuen was something he couldn't say he would have expected. It wasn't necessarily that the principle was alien to him, but rather that such a technique was uncommon in Soul Society, he'd found. Uncommon everywhere, really, in this day and age. As it flew toward him in a wide arc, Fuuen knew that his two options were to evade or to match it head on. Evasion was out of the question in the Returning Consort, and so all at one, his blade rose upward, at blinding speeds and wreathed in energy that had coalesced around it.

It certainly didn't dispel the energy Nao had sent toward him, but it parted the pressure, enough that he himself was left more or less unharmed. A smile slowly grew on his expression, and his stance shifted yet again, to a more aggressive stance, the blade held forward and his whole body tensed for the offensive. The Third of the Ukiyo Hakkei, the Clearing Wave.

He took one step toward the woman, the tremendous length of his blade now serving him all the better as he swung it down from above. A strike that was quite predictable, but that was the entire purpose of this technique; the Gaifuu Kaisei, 2nd of the Thirty Six views. Assuming she moved to avoid what would certainly be a serious blow, it was all too easy for him to follow it up with an infinitely more refined strike, a proper follow-up capitalizing on her evasion.

Of course, she could simply meet his blade head-on. He'd considered that, and it was entirely likely. He simply had to hope that his mastery was sufficient to cut through her spear, if that was the case.

He had handled the shockwave of her reiatsu refined by her hakuda, well that was pretty neat but if he thought he had her all figured out then she was going to show him that his oversized sword was nowhere near effective enough to beat her mastery with the spear.

"Nice try, sword boy!"

He dashed forward and so did she, her hand had let go of the spear for a moment in her shunpo to grab the spear closer to its head. Her aim was not to let him have his way, she would prove absolutely that her mastery of the spear was greater than his blade by trying to make her too close to benefit from its cumbersome length, knock the blade away closer to its base and stab her naginata at his side with the other hand like it was a blade with an extra long handle sticking out the back.

"You as well, spear girl."

It worked out quite to his advantage that she had simply knocked his blade to the side, for that meant Fuuen had been given ample opportunity to still finish the initial swing, and by extension to follow up expediently. Rather than simply allow his blade to be batted aside, he moved with it, using the momentum to guide him out of the way of Nao's spear thrust. At that same moment, he took a deep breath, focusing on the Clearing Wave stance's intricacies for only a moment before striking out with a crushing, almost violent blow. The spiritual energy in the area once more coalesced around the Yuudachi, a flame-like aura which wreathed the edge--

"Seiran Ni-shiki: Yamakaji."

Whether the blade crashed downward into the ground, or into Nao herself, the edge released all of its spiritual energy aggressively, flying outward in a shockwave that seemed to cut even the grass beneath their feet. It was not truly flame, after all, merely spiritual power forced to move by his skill with the blade, and as it traveled, it cut with all the strength of a blade.

How annoying she would have to defend, Nao's reiatsu shifting to withdraw and surround herself in a snug cushioning. Hardened skin and fortified body she made a recovery mid-air from a flip backwards after the force of the shockwave connected.

"Tch."

This guy was cheating somehow. Was it his zanpakuto or something else? Energy didn't just flow like that, whatever. Nao wouldn't dwindle on it.

"I'll just crush everything then!"

Nao grinned while she took up her stance. Her strongest move that'd strike him thricefold on all three fronts. She'd show him what her secret move could do when she was wielding a spear.

Nao's banter was thoroughly amusing to Fuuen, enough so that he felt his serious expression shift into a faint little smile. He'd not enjoyed a duel purely for the sake of having one in quite a while. He was opposed to violence, after all, for killing was not in his nature. But this was not a violent match, merely a comparison of their arts. As Nao took up her stance, so too did Fuuen, returning to his own default stance as he focused on his blade, the ambient energy now swirling in toward the edge of his sword before condensing upon it like dew.

"Is that so? Can you do so if I cut everything down?"

His blade was fully prepared for his most refined technique, the one that ranked first among the Thirty Six Views, but Fuuen had yet to take even a single step in properly activating it. She wished to show her own superiority, after all. It would be rude to simply defeat her without giving her the opportunity.

"Sanzan Koken - Shinsou..."

Nao's reiatsu disappeared for a moment, flickering as it was recalled into her being and the pressure became weaker and weaker while her heartbeat slowed until it came to a crawl. She'd show him why she was the God Spear Nao and how tough she could be.

With her chest in pain at the exertion to prevent her body from releasing reiatsu, Nao disappeared and began to use her flash steps. Three spear-wielding Nao's flickered in his vision before she'd set up all she needed to.

No more was there a reason to hurt herself and the reiatsu flared once more like a pack tigers that had emerged from the bushes on three sides of Fuuen.

"Mōko... Kō... Hazan!"

All at once her touki, reiatsu and physical pressure bore down on the space around him. Unlike when she used her hands this technique was a bit more refined and inspired to penetrate Shishiyuki's defences rather than be blow away from all sides. The other speed clones were only to assault his senses but the spear that Nao was wielding would deliver the full force of the attack to blast him far, far away from her.

Now this was a remarkable technique, and Fuuen took it in for those few brief moments that he was able to do so. Which of them was real? His spiritual sense was lacking, at least to a degree that he couldn't rely on that in this moment. No, he had to discern her fighting intent through nothing more than intuition. Closing his eyes, Fuuen's smile grew just a touch wider, and he spoke in a quiet, sure tone.

"Ikkei: Kanagawa Oki Nami-ura."

Fuuen's whole body tensed, and his foot shifted forward just a hair as he swung his blade, refusing to move any more than was absolutely necessary to avoid Nao's strike. This was a display of their greatest techniques, after all, and he wished to test hers. As he shifted and struck, each and every dewdrop of reishi which had accumulated on the edge of his sword flew outward, and formed itself into yet another blade. Uncountable swords, in the mere blink of an eye, formed around not only Nao, but her speed clones as well, striking from every possible direction all at once. Extending this technique to those other extensions of her was far more taxing, certainly, and would surely not have been possible if he were facing multiple genuine foes.

But this was still only one woman. And Fuuen, who had already seen every strike he could make, was still capable of making those strikes real in one moment.

She winced, this guy was definitely cheating as she felt blood running from wounds that litered her body. If she didn't have so much adrenaline pumping in her body then she'd surely have fainted from the amount of blows at once but she wasn't going to let him walk all over her with parlour tricks and so as she fell and Nao's hand shot out to catch herself in a handstand she stretched through the earth.

It ruptured, the earth below his feet and all around her in a perfect circle flew up in the air and while he hopefully struggled for his foothold she'd sweep at him with her naginata before her arm complained of holding its position and she had to push off to land back on her shaky feet.

"I'm... not... done... yet."

She said through grit teeth though her chest was betraying the fact that she was short of breath as her lungs clawed for air to recover. She didn't wanna lose against a guy like this.

Had Fuuen not overextended himself, and not done so while using his most difficult technique, he surely would not have been caught off guard by Nao's plan to ruin his footing. But Kanagawa Oki Nami-ura was a tremendously taxing technique even when used in the most ideal of circumstances. Having chosen to show off and use it against all three of her?

Well, that had left him exposed enough to receive a blow he didn't have time to avoid, wincing as the blade of her naginata cut through his back. He'd not felt a proper blow like that in a long while, and admittedly, it was not a feeling he relished. But, if nothing else, he admired the woman's tenacity, her skill, and after a moment to catch his breath, Fuuen pointed his blade at Nao once again.

"I don't believe in senseless violence, Miss Sawachika. I will gladly continue to meet your Sanzan Koken, but not if it puts your life at risk."

He was hardly so caught up in the moment that he would miss the strain on her body, and Fuuen was far from a fan of violence.